Adele Ferguson

Quincy Jones and his brother Lloyd, ages 10 and 8, were the first kids to arrive in Sinclair Heights in Bremerton in 1943, he writes in his 2001 “The Autobiography of Quincy Jones,” Doubleday.

Their father brought them by bus from Chicago to his new job as a carpenter in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard . Their mother was institutionalized, in and out of mental hospitals and their lives for years.

“For years we had been running from and with gangs,” wrote Quincy. “Finally we had graduated to our own turf. We took charge of everything in Sinclair Heights like we saw the gangs do back in Chicago: all the jobs, the territory, the crime, all ours.

BREMERTON was surrounded by farmland and the nearby farmers would wake up in the morning to find their apple trees picked, their strawberries stripped and eaten and chickens missing. “Sometimes they’d wait for us with shotguns and fire on us as we helped ourselves to their apples and chickens but shots never bit us or scared us away for long.

“Sinclair Heights was still being built when we moved in. It was meant to be temporary housing, for blacks who worked at the shipyard during World War II, and we broke into the construction office and stole the keys to every unoccupied new house We roasted our stolen chickens in brand new electric ovens in brand new houses. They tasted horrible.

“There were no playgrounds, no swing sets, no monkey bars, just miles and miles of towering evergreen trees, cougars and wilderness. We cut open the bottom lining of the pockets of our knickers to make them flow into the lining of the pants below, then walked into Bremerton stores with legs like toothpicks and walked out with our thighs bulging. “We loaded up on peanut butter, jelly, salami, Twinkies. cinnamon rolls and soda crackers. We once stole a crate of honey and went into the woods and drank jars and jars of it until we OD’d. It was 25 years before I could even look at honey again.

“I DELIVERED newspapers to the Army base next door then slipped into the ammo dumps and filled my empty newspaper bags with ammo belts, gloves, helmets, boots, leggings and live artillery rounds we hid in the coal bin. We had 30.06 rifles, and 30 mm air cooled and water cooled machine guns with 50 caliber ammunition in our pockets. We stole a fully loaded 2-inch artillery round and hid that there too.

“The Army base was missing so much ammo they sent a second lieutenant over to Sinclair Heights to look around and he peered into our coal bin and freaked. ‘You have enough ammo here to blow up the entire town of Bremerton,’ he said. They sent some soldiers to cart the stuff off. After that, it wasn’t unusual to see a Bremerton police car cruising up to our back door every weekend.

“THE REC CENTER in Sinclair Heights was called the Armory after the base next door. One night a gang of us broke into the soda fountain area and found the freezer where they stored lemon meringue pie and ice cream. We were stuffing ourselves with pie when I broke into a small room next door. There was a tiny stage and on it was an old upright piano. I went up, paused. stared and then tinkled on it for a moment. That’s where I began to find peace. I was 11. I knew this was for me. Forever.

“Each note touched a part of me that nothing else ever touched. The search for just the right piano notes soothed me, healed me, so I went back the next day, alone, and the next and the next. I’d climb through the window of the locked hall to play until a kindly black woman unlocked the door to keep me from having to break in. I’d found true love and nurturing. I’d found music,”

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa.. 98340.)